Modular design

While we describe how we implement aspects of modular design across all Seedcase products in our design documentation, this document explains this split between Python code, CLI, web app, and web API in the context of Sprout.

Python modules

In order to achieve our aims, the main functionality is designed and implemented as a Python package and can be used as a Python package. This code is stored in the Python module (folder location) sprout/core/ and is accessible via the Python code import sprout.core statement. Only external-facing functions would be exposed to the user and to other programs.

Any extensions would then only need to incorporate and depend on the sprout.core package to get Sprout’s functionality. Each extension would be its own module within Sprout, with modules named like sprout/extension_name/, for instance, sprout/cli/. That way, within the extension’s module, the logic that we implement is only specific to creating the CLI and not to the actual functionality of Sprout.

Other potential extensions would follow the same or similar pattern. This allows other developers to create their own extensions and interfaces to Sprout that suit their particular needs.

Our Guide has examples and tutorials on how each split is used.

For our CLI, it is placed in the module sprout/cli/. Each command imports the relevant functions from sprout.core, along with decorators (from other Python packages) to convert the Python code into a CLI program.
The web app is in sprout/app/. Each page of the web app imports the required functions from sprout.core, with functions from other Python packages that convert that code into a web app.
The web API is in sprout/api/. Each endpoint imports the required functions from sprout.core with functions from other Python packages that convert that code into a web API. This particular module may not be necessary as many Python packages that create web apps are also able to easily create web APIs from the same or slightly modified code.